Yes for X570... no for B550. There have been reports of Ryzen 2000 processors working on B550 motherboards but I wouldn't count on it as it's not supported....
is this still true?
does this mean if i get an x570 instead of a b550 i can continue to use my ryzen 2700 as a place holder?
No, B550 doesn't even support 2nd Gen Ryzen, only 3rd Gen/3000 series, and the upcoming 4th Gen 5000 series Zen3 CPUs.
X570 doesn't support 1st Gen, only 2nd, 3rd and 4th gen. The reason why, is mainly because of BIOS limitations. Also because of architectural limitations. In the simplest terms possible, there are features on X570 and B550 that the 1st Gen Ryzen processors were simply not designed to support, and therefore they can't be used on those motherboards. It is a question of HOW the processors were designed, and they were not designed to be compatible with some aspects of the newer chipset designs like the 2nd and 3rd Gen CPUs were, and even were not, in the case of 2nd Gen not being compatible with B550 boards.
To some degree it is also probably a matter of AMD and board manufacturers not wanting to lose out on being able to sell newer models as well.
In truth, these boards don't really offer ANYTHING important, for now anyhow, over B450 models, except for PCIe 4.0 support, which 1st Gen Ryzen CPUs do not have, and cannot have, but which doesn't really offer any gains even with CPUs that do support it when paired with PCIe 4.0 NVME drives and graphics cards, so you are just as well off using a good B450 board anyway with that CPU.
thanks. makes it all pretty limiting and confusing. I have been keeping my r5 1400 but now im not sure why.
I have been keeping my r5 1400 but now im not sure why.
Looking into this further, it appears the issue only happened with Bristol Bridge APUs. But overall I don't think the explanation is as easy as "manufacturers just wanted to be cheap"Not all boards had this limitation. Boards that were "cheaped out on" by the manufacturer, by using only 16mb Eproms. X570 boards have 32Gb Eproms, so this is not the problem regarding the compatibility on these boards. Mostly this applied to only B450 and older boards, and not all of those either.
B350 isn't going to ever support Ryzen 5000 series. Your B450m however, IS going to, come January.
No need to "tear down your work station" really. All you'd need to do is update to the latest BIOS when it becomes available, remove the CPU cooler, remove the CPU, install the new CPU, clean the thermal paste off the CPU cooler ASSUMING that it's a capable enough model to handle the new CPU (Or a new cooler if not), add fresh paste, install the cooler, done.
i upgraded from the r5 1400 to r7 2700 about 2 months ago. the 2700 is happy on my b350m with bios 4.30.
i wanted more cores for multitasking, video editing, streaming, and eventually flightsim, but more ipcs and better single threading is still desireable.
i would like to go to ryzen 5000 series but that would involve tearing down a work station thats on a b450m and tearing down my daily driver (b350m + ryzen 7) and swapping their mobos. sounds like way too much work tbh.
maybe mid-way thru next year theyll open some b350 support, til then the r7 2700 will have to do
So you're going to replace the CPU as well, right? Because that Ryzen 5 1400 isn't going to be compatible with any B550 motherboard. ONLY 3rd Gen Ryzen 3000 and newer CPUs are supported on B550, and the Ryzen 3000 series APUs with graphics, which are actually 2nd Gen architecture, like the 3200G and 3400G, are not compatible either. You will need a B450 or X470 board if you want something newer than the chipset you have that will still support that Ryzen 1400. Cannot be done with B550. The R7 2700 isn't supported either.i guess im on the market for a b550 now
I don't know that AMD has ever said there was a technical incompatibility with the chipset per se. I think their only concern was with BIOS compatibility and the growing problems of coding AGESA. After all, in addition to having sufficient room (in BIOS) to support all the CPU and APU configurations that have been on AM4 all the way from the 300 to the 500 series chipsets there's also the little problem of coding and regression testing each AGESA release for all those possible combinations too.like technically speaking, why doesnt it work?
also, would my ryzen 5 1400 work with a b550 board?
It's decent. The B450 Tomahawk or Tomahawk max is the very best bang for the buck B450 board though. But the Steel legend is really decent for an budget board. I have no qualms with ASRock's product support either. I like their BIOS setup as well on most boards, but it might be a little bit "skinny" on some of their budget models.
These are the two budget boards I'd look at. While I'm really not a fan of MSI, they knocked it out of the part on these two boards if you factor in the quality and capability of the VRMs they included, at the price they sell it for.
PCPartPicker Part List
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($126.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $126.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-20 21:02 EDT-0400
PCPartPicker Part List
Motherboard: MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($109.99 @ B&H)
Total: $109.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-20 21:03 EDT-0400
But again, the Steel legend is ok too, not AS good, but decent, if you prefer ASRock.
Actually...a B550 Steel Legend has a much better VRM than the Pro 4. It has 8 (or 12 for the ATX) phases of highly efficient DRMos power stages while the Pro 4 uses an outmoded design with 6 phases of discrete FET's. For a 3100/3300 CPU it won't matter much at all, of course, but if you've plans for the future you'll be limited by the VRM on the B550m Pro 4....
Im getting b550m Pro 4 by ASRock. I feel like the steel Legend is 35$ more just for LEDs.
...
Actually...a B550 Steel Legend has a much better VRM than the Pro 4. It has 8 (or 12 for the ATX) phases of highly efficient DRMos power stages while the Pro 4 uses an outmoded design with 6 phases of discrete FET's. For a 3100/3300 CPU it won't matter much at all, of course, but if you've plans for the future you'll be limited by the VRM on the B550m Pro 4.
I think it can affect RAM overclock as kind of a 'knock-on' effect, but not directly as the DIMM's have their own VRM's.thanks for this. i figured a b350m pro 4 was so good to me the last 3 years that a b550m pro 4 should be sufficient for another 3 atleast.
do those power phases affect RAM frequency when OCing memory or is that mostly a CPU overclock concern ?
I think it can affect RAM overclock as kind of a 'knock-on' effect, but not directly as the DIMM's have their own VRM's.
As the VCore VRM gets hot it doesn't hold stable voltages, with greater undershoot as loads drop off. So now you have to raise it more than should be necessary to keep a CPU stable. The higher voltage makes the entire CPU hotter. Remember that the memory controller is in the CPU so if it too gets hotter along with the rest of the CPU it can get less stable at high memory clocks.
And I'm not saying a 550m pro 4 won't be good for 3 years, especially a 3100 or 3300 processor. But we have no idea what the power draw of ryzen 5000 (assuming one is in your future plans) is going to be right now. Let's say it will be 'as efficient as' ryzen 3000...mainly because people have said so. Efficiency, simply, is how much work you get for the power it draws so ryzen 5000 could easily draw 19% more power because its greater IPC makes it do 19% more work... and it would not make those people liars because efficiency remains unchanged.
I know it's doubtless oversimplifying things, but if anywhere close to right it helps explain why almost all the B550 board lineup has so very much greater VRM capability than the B450 boards that preceded them.
More cores does NOT help MS Flight Sim 2020. It's DX11 which only does single threaded rendering. (not that is can't run background threads for scenery pulling from the cloud, or dynamic weather generation) Test show it is CPU limited, not GPU limited. So a faster cores are better, not more.